How to shrink a mailbox in Exchange 2003

Dumb question - you're emptying the deleted items, right?

After that, you'll need to let the deleted item retention period expire.  Or shorten it.

Now you can run an offline defrag to reclaim *disk* space from the message store (if that's needed).  If you just want smaller mailboxes (not message store), then you should be looking at deleted items and deleted item retention only.

Here's a thread that discusses these topics in great detail...

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Email_Servers/Exchange/Q_23022639.html

Hope that helps!

Am I allowed to have a 2nd 2003 mailbox db on an exchange 2003 standard machine?

No. SE only allows for 1 mailbox DB.  You'll have to perform an offline defrag using ESEUTIL. steps found here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328804

Or you can just open the big mailboxes in Outlook and delete the dumpster items.

If you're looking to reduce mailbox sizes, you'll need to empty the dumpster.  An offline defrag won't do that for you.

Moreover, you only need an offline defrag if you want to reduce *message store* size - not mailbox size.  Clearing the dumpster should take care of that.

(Though I'd probably do both to maximize performance, if I had the luxury of taking the message store offline for the defrag prior to executing the mailbox migrations.  But that's just me...)

I set the deleted items retention to 0 days and turned off "wait for a backup", but there are still 600,000 deleted items.

Can I just delete the mailbox and then recreate it for the same user... not delete the user, just the mailbox?

All her mail is backed up to a pst file.

Alternatively, does restarting the IS activate the 0 days retention time?  When should I realistically see those 600,000 deleted items gone.  (Looking at the ESM here.  There are ZERO items in the deleted folder in Outlook).

If you are going to recreate the mailbox, then why are you going to all the trouble with moving mailboxes.  Just create a fresh mailbox in Exchange 2010 and import mail from PSTs.

Exactly what I was thinking...

bcapello, I actually didn't think of it.  And not that I think of it I like it but I'm worried about it.  First I have to delete the exchange 2003 mailbox without deleting the user, and I've never done that.  Problems?  No problems?

Secondly, when I go to create the new mailbox for an existing user on Exchange 2010 (which I've never done and don't know how to do offhand), is there a problem because that user previously had a mailbox?

These questions worry me, but I'm interested in what you've got to say on them.

Thanks

A consideration: you say user mail is backed up to PST, bit where is user mail flowing today? What are the users connected to today?

The remove mailbox/create mailbox proceedures are very straightforward, and there is no risk to the underlying user account. But if you don't redirect or mitigate mail flow, then run another PST export before the process, there's bound to be mail lost.  

yeah I guess that's why I'd rather move the mailbox than delete it... I don't want to lose any emails

I would just try moving the mailboxes.  you'll lose all the deleted item retention when moving a mailbox. If it takes a long time - its probably due to the item count being so high.  I would let the move run overnight.  How many mailboxes are we talking about?  How many have large item counts?

I really wish I could just purge those deleted items.

Retention time is set to 0 and no backup required.

One of the user's deleted items is now shrinking.  It happened, I think, when I logged on to windows with that users account, ran outlook, then exited and logged off.  Looks like it triggered the cleanup.

I'll have the other users do the same.

Thanks for all your help.

right click on the 'mailboxes' folder and choose "Run Cleanup Agent'.  That isn't an item count in the Deleted Items column.  that is 'size'. Good Luck.